Changes

During the Eighteenth Century, European technological advances, nation-building agendas and philosophical debates combined to produce an era of expedition and state-sponsored social and scientific classification. Harry Liebersohn identifies the years between 1750 and 1850 as a “distinctive era” in overseas-exploration, scientific ethnography, and the development of the human sciences.<ref>Porter, Theodore, Ross, Dorothy, ed, <I>The Modern Social Sciences, Vol 7</i>, Cambridge University Press. 2003</ref> What was this “distinctive era” and the transitions within it from exploration to anthropology, as people tried to reconcile their philosophical and religious beliefs with evidence of unimagined human variety. This transition was complex, and took different forms in Europe and North America, and themes inherent to each will be addressed below. In order enrich the interpretation of this era, the career contributions of an American traveler, diplomat, and politician, Joel Poinsett, need to be explored.

During the early 1800s, Poinsett moved in the same European social circles with some of the first naturalists and travelers to explore the Pacific Islands. He explored Mexico in the early 1820s and published both popular and official descriptions of the new nation. During the 1830s and 1840s, Poinsett worked as both the US Secretary of War, and a patron of the human sciences, and was involved in the foundation of the organization that would become The Smithsonian Institute.

Poinsett’s career reflects the complexities that distinguish this era. As travel accounts became foundational to ethnographic and anthropological sciences, his career turned from exploration to scientific patronage and institution-building. As questions of human nature became fundamental to definitions of republicanism, natural rights, and national identity, Poinsett went to Mexico, as both a liberal influence, and imperial investigator. As explanations for human variation became integral to debates over race, slavery and American Exceptionalism, Poinsett published an article defining innate differences between civilized people and barbarians, and, as Secretary of War, carried out widespread Indian removal.

===Europe===

Liebersohn examined several high-profile European naturalists and explorers in The Traveler’s World. He argues for the significance of networks of global travelers and European scholars who influenced state policy and informed conceptions of empire and race. He profiles the experiences of: Philbert Commerson, on the 1766-1769 voyage to Tahiti with Louis de Bougainville; George Forster, on the 1772-1775 voyage with Captain Cook, also to Tahiti; and, finally, Adelbert von Chamisso on the 1815-1818 voyage to the Hawaiian Islands aboard the Russian vessel the “Rurik”. Liebersohn discusses the accounts written by these men, integrating their stories into a well developed historical interpretation of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanual Kant and others, and the far-flung implications of the cultural exchange intrinsic to colonialism. Liebersohn paid serious attention to the networks of relationships between the naturalists, the political intentions and conditions of the states that sponsor their expeditions, the Pacific Islanders that they encounter, and the community of philosophers and scholars who used their travel accounts to construct and support their theories on human nature.

Chamisso, the third naturalist Liebersohn profiles, moved in the post-Revolutionary Parisian circles of Romantics and salons. Seasoned by the danger of popular mobilization of the Terror and the repression of the Napoleonic Wars, Chamisso focuses less on ideas of equality and more on manifestations of liberty. Conscious of the naturalists’ tendency to imprint their accounts with their own personal and philosophical bias, Chamisso sought to only “present the strange land and the strange people.”<ref>Liebersohn, pg 71</ref> Chamisso’s voyage aboard the Rurik also had more explicitly nationalistic intentions, as it was pursuing both economic and imperial goals for the Russian Empire, as well as providing passage and support for scientific research. This intersection of the interests of science and state during expeditions was to become more prominent during the Nineteenth Century.

Krumpelmann, John T., <I>The South Central Bulletin</I>, “Duke Berhnhard of Save-Weimer”</ref> during a time when new ideas about government and citizenship interacted with accounts of contact with distant native populations. Although there is a lack of available material written by Poinsett during this time, his subsequent actions and interactions illustrate a practical combination of abstract and concrete aspects of travel and politics.

===Mexico===

Mexico has been the object of foreign observations since the early 1800s. Mexico Otherwise examines the content and impact of traveler’s accounts of Mexican people, culture and politics. Employing concepts of Orientalism, developed by Edward Said, and applying it to the literary and intellectual treatment of Mexico, Buchenau argues that travel accounts of Mexico have not only constructed international perceptions of Mexico and Mexican people, but also influenced memory and meaning within Mexico. Buchenau argues powerful nations saw Mexico as a “single undifferentiated other”, just as colonial powers saw India. Traveler and foreign observer accounts of Mexico helped “invent categories”, creating “an essentialist discourse that subsumed a wealth of cultural difference.”<ref>Buchenau, <I>Mexico Otherwise</I>, Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2005, pg 3.</ref> Buchenau features excerpts from many foreign observer accounts of Mexican culture, environments and people. The first two traveler’s accounts of this vast land, Alexander von Humboldt and Joel Poinsett illustrate both Orientalist themes, and the implications and implementations of the human sciences in new North American republics.

Humboldt’s Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, discussed themes of race, gender and ethnicity in the Spanish colony, and drew the attention of European governments and businessmen to the region. Paternalistic in tone, Humboldt depicted an “unequal struggle between nations far advanced in arts and others in the very lowest degree of civilization.” His sympathy for the “unfortunate race of Aztec”, that he perceived to be in a “state of degradation”, is evident in his account. Humboldt sought a model that would reconcile the poverty of the indigenous people with the evidence of their pre-conquest social, political, and scientific accomplishments. In his effort to remove blame from indigenous people for their “degradation”, Humboldt urges readers not to judge them from their “miserable remains.”<ref> Buchenau, <I>Mexico Otherwise</I>, Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2005, pg 20.</ref> Yet, as Buchenau argues, this laid the foundation for the “essentialist discourse” that obscured the variety of the inhabitants of New Spain, and subsequently Mexico, “under single categories such as ‘Mexican’ or ‘Indian.'”<ref> Buchenau, pg 3.</ref>

The year after Mexico achieved independence, Poinsett came to the country as the appointed emissary on a special mission for President Monroe.<ref>Buchenau, 29.</ref> Traveling as both an explorer and agent, Poinsett’s accounts of this journey display a naturalist’s interest in botany, a statesman’s ideas of republican-style government, and an imperialist’s eye for detail. The two accounts he wrote about his 1822 trip to Mexico parallel each other, they both documented the same expedition, but appealed to different audiences.<ref>Poinsett, Joel, <I>Notes on Mexico</I>, New York; London: Praeger, 1969, pg 119</ref> <I>Notes on Mexico</I> was patterned after other popular travel accounts of the era, mixing a description of Mexican landscape with observations of the people and customs Poinsett encountered. Very different in perspective than the idealistic accounts of Commerson, or the Romantic investigations of Chamisso, Poinsett identified with the Mexican Creoles, whose “good natural talents”distinguished them from the indigenous population and their “indolence…blind submission… (and)…abject misery.”<ref>Poinsett, 120.</ref> He used evidence of beggars in Mexico City as evidence of Mexico’s intermediate level of civilization, beyond subsistence existence, and able to provide charity to a vagrant population. <ref>Poinsett, 203.</ref> Poinsett included an historical sketch of the country, lauding the astronomy, architecture, and technological innovations accomplished by the indigenous people before Spanish conquest, and rued the circumstances that exterminated the indigenous priests and left only the lower classes and “oppressed and degraded people alone to represent the former Mexican.”<ref>Poinsett, 248.</ref>

===The United States of America===

Poinsett’s expedition to Mexico was part of a larger trend in the history of the United States, during the years of the New Republic, as the U.S. applied the philosophical debate over the definition of the human species and the meaning of human diversity, to American ideas of Manifest Destiny and race. Thomas C. Patterson’s book, A Social History of Anthropology in the United States, examines the purpose and meaning in the development of anthropology in the U.S. Patterson explores the origins of anthropology in European traveler’s accounts and the philosophical debates of Rousseau, Kant and others, and identifies two different ways anthropology and other human sciences have been used by individuals and states. Supporters of social hierarchy used travel accounts to justify conquest and repression, seeing history as, “a series of progressive changes…from the original, primitive condition to more advances, diversified circumstances,” and, “the conquest of nature, material improvement, and increasing modernity as motors driving these changes.”<ref> Patterson, <I>A Social History of Anthropology in the United States</I>, pg 1.</ref>

In 1834, Poinsett published a paper on anthropology, An Inquiry into the Received Opinions of Philosophers and Historians on the Natural Progress of the Human Race from Barbarism to Civilization. Poinsett’s paper defended his nation’s strength and virility. Addressing Buffon directly, Poinsett claimed the natives of his country were not weak due to any environmental flaws, but because of their “habits and pursuits” and the “innate passion in the breast of the Savage,” that loves warfare and rejects agriculture.<ref> Poinsett, Joel, <I>Inquiry into the Received Opinions of Philosophers and Historians, on the Natural Progress of the Human Race from Barbarism to Civilization</I>, Charleston, SC: JS Burges, 1834, pg 19.</ref> Using polygenist rhetoric of multiple human species, and “immutable conditions,” Poinsett rebutted Buffon’s attacks on US potential.<ref><I>Inquiry into the Received Opinions of Philosophers and Historians</I>, pg. 13.</ref> He wrote of the “white and noble race” of Anglo-Saxons, and the racial hierarchy that supported American constructions of national identity, white superiority, and manifest destiny. The Algonquins, claimed Poinsett, did not respond adequately to missionaries and education, and he wrote, “they do not advance towards a state of civilization, but retain their ancient habits, language, and customs, and are every day more depraved, indigent, and insignificant.”.<ref><I>Inquiry into the Received Opinions of Philosophers and Historians</I>, pg. 41.</ref> By denying the civilization of Indian tribespeople, Poinsett laid the philosophical groundwork for Indian removal, in much the same way as Locke’s Second Treatise of Government had in decades past.

Poinsett, with his political career and his patronage of science, and his time as a philosopher, explorer, ambassador and agent, embodies themes inherent to the “distinctive era” of travel and science. His writings and official activity emphasize the relationship analyzed by Liebersohn in The Traveler’s World, between travelers and philosophers, and travelers and their patron states, particularly because he acts as each of these three members of the relationship during his life.

===Conclusion===

The debate over nature and nurture had powerful implications during this time of exploration and expansion. The search for an explanation for human difference inspired both philosophy and political policy, in Europe and North America, as nations sought the definition of the human species and justification for racial and social hierarchy. Colonial States and new republics used travel accounts and the developing discipline of anthropology to support their national identities and territorial agendas. Individual agency interacted with state-building projects, as theories of natural man and innate abilities defined the rights of humans to maintain their culture and territory. Taking different forms in Europe and North America, this debate continues to have profound implications in society today, as questions of race and human variety inform discussions of human potential.

===References===

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